Sermon on Isaiah 3-4 (specifically, Isaiah 3:1-9, 13-15; 4:2-6) and Galatians 3:23-29. Delivered 26 October 2014 at Pequea Evangelical Congregational Church. The third installment of a sermon series on the Book of Isaiah; see also sermons on Isaiah 1 and Isaiah 2.
The third chapter of the
prophecies of Isaiah, that great fifth Evangelist, is no rosy
picture. He could not afford to be gentle with an out-of-control
Judah. No, Isaiah's verbal arts paint a damning portrait of a
society degraded to its roots, locked in a ruinously unstable state.
God speaking through Isaiah has to warn that, in the exile that will
come as punishment upon them, all competent political, military, and
spiritual leadership will be snatched away to a foreign land.
Remaining is a competence vacuum, filled by the untaught,
uninstructed, unwise, inexperienced. Leadership becomes a synonym
for corruption.
Society is in turmoil:
the young rise up against the old, the shameless rise up against the
dignified, the camps of Occupy Jerusalem litter the heaps of rubble –
and in the vicious cycle of uprising and oppression, the poor and
vulnerable are put through the grinder. The people aren't content to
sin in quiet and make a hypocritical display of goodness. No, they
celebrate their sin, christening it as good, patting themselves on
the back for being so clever. Violence, theft, debauchery – these
are exciting, these are a distraction, these are survival, these are
glorified. But how can a society survive like this? How can a
society function when, politically and spiritually, those it calls
leaders aren't good examples to imitate? How can a society survive
this level of drastic mismanagement? It may squeak by, but it can't
very well thrive – yet such was the state of Judah at the
outbreak of crisis, as Isaiah foresaw.
Over two thousand years
later, another man found himself in a situation not so unlike
Isaiah's. In this later time, society had again become corrupt. The
earthly potentate of the western church, the pope, had become one
among any number of worldly princes, and made war with them as often
as peace. The notoriously corrupt Pope Alexander VI openly had
numerous mistresses and installed various friends and relatives as
high-ranking church officials. His successor, Pope Julius II, was
often fueled by jealousy, had fathered a daughter out of wedlock
while still a cardinal, and presented himself as a new Julius Caesar
to lead a new Christian empire in military victory.
The practice had long
since emerged that the pallium – the special vestment marking out
high-ranking bishops – required the 'donation' of a massive fee,
and so joined with other factors that made church offices essentially
available for purchase for those with the right connections and
social standing. Meanwhile, the church authorities had developed a
theology in which, to cover up the punishment for our sins, a special
'indulgence' – access to the treasury of excess 'goodness' built up
by Jesus and by saints – could be doled out in exchange for various
religious acts – including 'charitable' gifts to church leaders.
Between the need to pay for building opulent churches, and the need
for church leaders to pay off debts incurred when they bought their
office, this set the stage for indulgences – a remission of
punishment for the dead in purgatory or the living in advance of
purgatory, but easily understood as forgiveness of sins and thus a
license to sin with impunity – to be sold by men like Johann
Tetzel.
Like Isaiah before him, a
man dared to challenge his corrupt society. A monk, theologian,
biblical scholar – his name was Martin Luther. It's no wonder that
he read Isaiah 3 as “a prophecy for our age against princes and
bishops” and suggested that “the sin of our countrymen is greater
than the sin of Sodom was”. Initially, infuriated by Tetzel's
dealings, Luther only meant to offer up for discussion 95 searching
questions about anti-Christian practices he felt must surely be a
local mistake – but when his questions went viral thanks to the
wonders of Gutenberg's printing press, he found himself forced into a
confrontation with the powers-that-be. He asked, if indulgences work
the way they supposedly do, why wouldn't loving church leaders give
them out freely as quickly as possible? Luther argued:
Any
Christian whatsoever who is truly repentant enjoys full remission
from penalty and guilt, and this is given to him without letters of
indulgence. Any true Christian whatsoever, living or dead,
participates in all the benefits of Christ and the Church; and this
participation is granted to him by God without letters of indulgence.
[…] Christians should be taught that one who gives to the poor or
lends to the needy does a better action than if he buys indulgences;
because, by works of love, love grows and a man becomes a better man;
whereas, by indulgences, he doesn't become a better man, but only
escapes certain penalties. […] The true treasure of the church is
the holy gospel of the glory and grace of God. […] Christians
should be exhorted to be zealous to follow Christ, their Head,
through penalties, deaths, and hells; and let them thus be more
confident of entering heaven through many tribulations rather than
through a false assurance of peace.
Luther's challenge did
not go unnoticed. In the year 1520, Pope Leo X issued the papal bull
Exsurge Domine, threatening
Luther with excommunication unless he recanted forty-one points of
teaching within the next sixty days. Luther refused, stepped up his
publishing campaign, burned a copy of Exsurge Domine
that December, and went on trial before Emperor Charles V the next
year, declaring his conscience to be captive to the word of God
alone. He escaped arrest, went on to translate the Bible into
German, married a former nun, organized congregations that dissented
from the corrupt practices of the mainstream institutional church,
and died in the year 1546.
Luther
wasn't perfect. He was wrong on a number of key theological points,
like the relation of faith to reason and the importance of human free
will. He failed to adequately challenge his political protector,
Philip of Hesse, when he insisted on taking a second wife. Luther
could be ill-tempered, especially as his health worsened, and once
disillusioned about his hopes for leading the Jews of the German
states to Jesus, his later writings about them lent support centuries
later to the Holocaust.
But
in his day, Luther stood as a bold witness. And cleaving to the Lord
Jesus Christ in empty-handed faith, bearing faithful witness to him
as the Way, the Truth, and the Life over against all opposing powers,
is and has always been the robustly Christian way of resisting a
corrupt world. Luther rediscovered the key: that real godly virtue,
real righteousness, flows out
of faith, not the other way around, because faith fulfills the First
Commandment, unites us with Jesus, exchanges our sinful curse for his
divine blessing, and flowers in grateful love. Standing firm in this
faith, Luther withstood much of the raging tempest that the corrupt
political and religious establishment hurled his way. He sparked, in
short, a Reformation, one that changed the political and spiritual
landscape of the whole world.
In
our own time, we are also called to stand as a community of witness.
Isaiah's description of society in shambles cuts awfully close today.
Do we not also live in a day of often-incompetent political and
religious leadership, a day rampant with foolishness and sneering, a
day of cowardly compromise? How many political leaders beyond the
local level come to mind when I say the words 'integrity',
'principled', 'trustworthy'? Some, no doubt; but not enough. How
many denominations both engage constructively with the world and
hold the gospel pure and undefiled? It's easy to fail in one or
both.
In our world, do we not frequently see the poor oppressed – either
demeaned, on one side of the political aisle, as being undeserving of
love, support, and gentle reform, or else, on the other side of the
political aisle, enabled in bad habits and exploited perpetually for
political gains? Do we not see the constant manipulation of young
versus old? The young dismiss the stodgy, out-of-touch, inflexible,
old-fashioned ways of the elders; and the elders, in their turn,
deride the young as lazy, unmotivated, ungrateful, addicted to
constant change. Both caricatures are wrapped up in the same
hopeless cycle, repeating itself in generation after generation.
Do
we not, in our day, see the eradication of many standards of what it
means to be honorable? Is ours not a time when the slogan from
Judges, 'every man did that which was right in his own eyes', could
in practice almost supplant 'In God we trust' as a national motto?
As Luther said, the uprising of the 'base' against the 'honorable'
has its roots in the self-assertion, “I'm just as good as you are”.
These days, you may hear it crop up in phrases like, “Don't force
your beliefs on me; don't judge me; no one can judge but God” –
but heaven forbid we listen to what God actually
has to say.
Do
we not see, in these very days and weeks, people “parading their
sin like Sodom”, not ashamed of breaking the commandments of our
God for how to flourish as holy bearers of his image, but actively
celebrating
their so-called 'liberty' to sin? You've seen the news. The
attitude grows that all who will not conform must be shamed or
punished. You've seen how the court of popular opinion treats those
who will not 'bow the knee to Baal', who will not offer just a pinch
of incense to Caesar, who will not compromise their Christian
convictions on the value of unborn human life, or the solemn nature
of marriage as a God-given institution mirroring Christ and his
Church, or the freedom to worship not just within the walls of our
buildings, but to worship God with our lives in the public square, in
the marketplace, the academy – all convictions that should be
evident to fair-minded people on the basis of reason and human
decency, both of which are in short supply today.
This
is not a call to “take America back” – as if we ever 'had' it!
As if our history weren't so much a series of trade-offs, one set of
trendy sins for another! As if our pretense at civil religion
couldn't so often be summed up under the phrase, “This people draw
near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honor me, but have
removed their heart far from me” (Isaiah 29:13)! No, this is not a
call to “take America back”, but to give
back to our village, our town, our county, our state, our nation, our
world. To give what? To give our witness
– like Isaiah, like Luther. To forsake compromise, to stand firm
in “speaking the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15), to remain
faithful, and to not just tell but show
that true life is found in Jesus Christ and his love – and “if
you love me, keep my commands” (John 14:15).
Isaiah
and Luther both knew that our hope is not to be found merely
in reforming outward habits, in dropping external bad habits for
externally better habits. That's important, but we need reform of
the heart. Our hope involves binding ourselves to accountability to
another kingdom, the world of the heavenly Zion, the kingdom of the
Branch of the LORD
– Jesus Christ. While the world – and the worldly even in
compromised churches – disdain Christ and his faithful ones as “a
dried-up tree trunk”, Luther recognized with Isaiah that “they
are not regarded as such before God”, for “the kingdom of Christ
is now glorious in the spirit”. Only this Branch, restoring the
intimacy of God's protection of the Israelites in their exodus, can
give protection. Luther commented:
The Christian has no other cover than Christ; he does not rely on the
arm of flesh, for there is no salvation in man, nor on good works,
for they are not good in the presence of God. The Christian should
teach and act in such a way that he may dare to stand in the presence
of God. But the faithful are supported by the Word alone. […]
Faintheartedness is not made strong with hands but by the Word of
God, which alone heartens and causes to stand. If you trust in men,
you will have help neither from them nor from God, who forsakes those
who forsake Him. For the Word of God is the exceedingly strong tower
of Zion and the pavilion of God offering protection in prosperity and
adversity.
As
Isaiah shows in his fourth chapter, we must come to grow
through union with this Branch – to be Christ's twigs, bearing
glorious fruit by faith,
which secures our life-giving connection with the Branch. Only the
life of the Branch, made real in us, gives clean fruit, glorious
fruit acceptable to the LORD
our God. Only by living faith – not a dead and fruitless faith,
but a living faith made perfect in love – makes us righteous
through that Glorious Exchange: our unrighteousness for the
righteousness of Christ in God. And only when we are righteous by
faith
may we inherit Isaiah's promise and “enjoy
the fruit of our deeds” (Isaiah 3:10).
We
must let Jesus Christ, the Branch of the LORD,
be our “Mediator, Leader, Teacher, Priest”, our “Pillar and the
Cloud”, and “yet that cloud will not appear except through the
Word which protects and goes before, and we follow”, as Luther
rightly commented. In all things, we must witness to Christ's
ways, careful to be faithful to him and his teaching, and in being a
community of witness, to hold ourselves, one another, and those
charged with leadership accountable to the Holy Branch. Do we so
witness? Are we living as examples of how faith brings the
righteousness of God? How is our witness today, this week, this
month?
